The Hole

The Hole (2009) is a fantasy thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Joe Dante — the man behind Gremlins — and very much in that same spirit of bright surfaces hiding something genuinely unsettling. Brothers Dane and Lucas move with their mother from New York to the sleepy town of Bensonville and find, in the basement, a hatch sealed with multiple padlocks.

Below it: a pit with no visible bottom. No noise, no glow, just a drop into nothing. Once they open it — along with their neighbour Julie, played by Haley Bennett — things start crawling out of the dark. Not monsters exactly, but the specific, personalised fears of each kid. That is the film's better idea: the hole doesn't produce the same terror twice.

Dante keeps the tone just shy of actually frightening, which makes it work better for its target age range than most studio horror attempts of the era. Dick Miller, a B-movie institution, turns up in a small role. Stream The Hole (2009) full movie online on iFILM.